Photo Captured 📷 Thursday, November 12, 2015 in Tampa Bay, FL by Dutch ⬇️
Funfacts: 📖🎉
1️⃣
Before I knew I was going to officially become an Artist/Emcee/Producer for the next 3 decades, I started my journey in 1995, alone in my room making beats for fun on Casio Keyboard that had a loop and record function that I would record freestyles w/ my neighbors, friends over on a crappy Karaoke Machine (Casio in the photo is not the one I had) - I Still have all those casio beats as well as all those early freestyles on cassette and recently digitized them tho ;)
2️⃣
Maybe you weren't born yet, maybe you weren't a music nerd that was equally super invested in the golden era of 90's hip-hop both equally as a super fan as well as an official artist. Maybe you were? but just in case i'll break down some objective hip-hop history timeline. ⬇️ After the very public beef and deaths of Biggie Smalls & 2pac that sparked the East Coast vs West Coast fiasco. The energy "main stream" shifted from fun, vulnerable, experimental & diverse and ushered in the super unrealistic, ultra materialistic Jiggy Era spearheaded by Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs. Thankfully at the time, while this was happening. There was still a balance in the mainstream i.e. De La Soul - "Stakes is High" / Blackeyedpea's "Falling Up" (don't get me started on how quickly they became biggest hypocrites in hip-hop history haha) and there was many more. Unless you were a fan of hip-hop during that era to the point of never missing an episode of Rap city or Yo! MTV Raps, You might not be aware that there was A time, Records and Artists you would now consider underground or experimental had an equal amount of TV Airtime. The Jiggy / Party era began to phase that out (at least in video / fm radio form) Late 1997 & 1998 Clear-channel monopolised "urban" FM radio across the states, playing the same "Popular" songs over and over and over by proxy and by design force feeding perceived popularity. While this sucked to witness, The rise of the Independent / Underground Era was sent into hyper drive. W/ access to College / Public Access Radio + the internet w/ places like Sandboxautomatic, Atak distribution. hiphopsite.com, etc... There was zero shortage of dope and diverse music. ⬇️ Which brings us to the image and most important history lesson relevant to this artifact. 1998, Swizz Beatz steps out onto the scene via the Famous DMX "Ruff Ryder's Anthem" - A Banger but also a cheap casio, sample free beat. Music industry takes note: Wait... we can make hit records without having to pay for sample clearance?!?! Let's do that from now on 90% of the time... Combined with Clear Channel Payola Strategy the future of "mainstream" hip-hop that the general population was exposed to that wasn't a super fan, digging for substance became a water down, hyper materialistic hellscape (compared to what was made equally publicly available prior)...
⬇️
Soundtrack of expanded Context:
🎧🔗Celph Titled - "I Could Write A Rhyme" - Produced by Buckwild🔗
🎧🔗Celph Titled - "The Final Word" (feat. L-Fudge) - Produced by Celph Titled🔗
💽🔗Dutchmassive - "Soul Searchin'" (feat. Pack FM) - Produced by J. Rawls 🔗
💽🔗Dutchmassive - "Classic" - Produced by Celph Titled 🔗
⬇️ "The More You Know 🌈" Organic Discovery Has Been Strategically, Slowly Sunset by Design...
Do The Ledge. 🫂
